Ajurinmäen päiväkoti, Espoo, Finland

Exemplary design categories: community use and involvement, outdoor spaces

How the facility meets the needs of education and communities:
This new single-storey building serves as a kindergarten and day-care centre and as a neighbourhood community building. As well as having space for over 60 children in the kindergarten, the community facilities attract 200 to 300 users a day. The long linear structure has a distinctive dragon red exterior. There are self-contained areas for each of the building’s user groups organised around a central corridor running down the main axis of the building. The community facilities are accommodated in the eastern half of the building towards the main entrance. The kindergarten occupies the western half of the building and has two separate entrances. The building is light and decorated in soft pastel colours throughout, with timber finishes on doors, walls and ceilings. The interiors vary in height and the attic space below the shallow roof is utilised in some rooms. For example, there is an open loft area in one of the children’s activity rooms. The placement of the windows are arbitrary, the pitches of the roof landscape are different, and the three lanterns that protrude through the roof bring daylight into the interior.

Activity Areas: main hall, 2 home areas for children aged 1–3 years, home area for children aged 4–6 years (each home area comprises a suite of three rooms, with a main activity room, a side room for small groups and a room with cots where children can sleep), 2 workshops, office, community space, kitchen, 2 playgrounds, car park